Does Bartonville, IL need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Bartonville in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Rank it against the rest of the country and Bartonville sits at the 40th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Bartonville by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.064g, short-period spectral response 0.134g, 1-second spectral response 0.078g. Among 330 Illinois cities in this dataset, Bartonville ranks 167 for seismic hazard, the 50th percentile within the state. About 5,836 people live in Bartonville, Illinois.

Retrofit economics for Bartonville

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Illinois. A typical retrofit still runs $5,000-$10,000 nationally, about $7,000 for a common single-family job.

Earthquake insurance for a Bartonville home

Outside California, earthquake coverage is typically sold as an endorsement added to a standard homeowners policy, not a separate product - worth asking about directly when getting a home-insurance quote for a Bartonville address.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide covers exactly how USGS's public design-maps API produced Bartonville's numbers. The guide to what a Seismic Design Category actually means covers why a category is never a substitute for an engineer's assessment of one specific house.